So, I decided to write a oneshot. Still focused on Angels, but thought I'd have some fun writing a more unconventional E/C. This is my first, so thoughts and feedback would be very much appreciated :)
Based on a prompt by thedawncomes (on ao3):
Modern, of course. It's the middle of the night, Christine is out late for whatever reason walking home alone in the dark (and for story purposes forgot her phone somewhere). All of a sudden, she notices she's followed by some guy and he's starting to gain on her. Christine, by some stroke of luck, happens to find a phone booth with a lock on the door. She tries to call Meg, but her hands were shaking too badly and accidentally calls the wrong number.
Erik picks up.
"I don't even know you but please help me."
Payphone
The street is empty, illuminated by a single waning streetlamp; the unmistakable shadow of a man slinks over the pavement, furtive, fatal, and one block ahead a girl is running.
Shallow, rapid breaths into the cool night air, purse bumping against hip, raw fear honing senses to crystalline clarity - her gaze flickers over the dead, empty storefronts, entrances to dark alleyways - no help, nothing good there - and her heart is sinking with every slam of foot against hard pavement, frantic, alone.
She looks up, and gasps; up ahead, there is a beacon of light. A flickering, fluorescent sign atop an outdated rectangular steel frame, a relic from the past. PHONE.
It takes a moment to process, but then she sucks in a sharp, deep breath, and in a flash she's inside the phone booth and sliding the rickety door shut, turning the lock - there's a lock! - with a sigh of something close to relief -
A very short-lived relief as she stares at the payphone, at the rusty slot - and then she's digging through her purse, wildly, panicked fingers searching for -
Thank God! She stares at the tarnished quarters in her hand, just enough - and in a breath she is jamming them into the slot, picking up the phone, dialing a number with trembling fingers, a number she knows by heart. Raoul, her dear Raoul - she can trust him, and of everyone she knows he has the resources to perhaps hide her, get her out of the city, take her anywhere as long as it's away from the living nightmare her world has spiraled into -
She stares at the keypad in horror.
A single slip of her shaking hand, and she'd dialed the wrong last digit. A 6 instead of a 4.
Oh my God…
And she has no more quarters left.
She lets out a single sob as the waiting tone comes on, automatic, taunting; she's going to die here in this phone booth, with a stranger on the line - she knows they can't be far behind, and what she can see of the street around her in the flickering, cold-fluorescent illumination still looks deserted, and she's locked in a phone booth with no cell phone, gripping a useless plastic payphone in one hand, no escape -
There's a click, and the waiting tone cuts off into silence.
"I don't even know you but please help me."
There is no response; there is silence, heavy and weighted, and panic is coalescing into dread.
"Hello?" she tries again, suppressing another sob.
"If this is a prank call, I don't appreciate it," comes a deep male voice over the staticky line, and her heart leaps, and she's talking before she can think.
"This isn't a prank call, sir, I need your help. There's someone trying to kill me and I can't trust the police right now, they're on their side -"
"Is this some practical joke? Goodbye," the voice says drily, and she nearly screams.
"No no no no no, please," and she knows she's babbling now, begging; imploring a stranger with everything within her, beseeching the man for what she well knows is the impossible but has to be possible, must be - "Please. My name is Christine Daae, and I'm being pursued and I need help. I'm on Washington Avenue, somewhere past Sterling Place, I think, and - and there is a man who's been following me for twelve blocks, and - please."
An awful silence; she holds her breath, and then -
"Daae?"
"Y-yes, Christine Daae," she whispers, suddenly quaking at the thought that her random dial may be one of them, or at least, working for them; she may have just condemned herself. Stupid, stupid… She closes her eyes. "Please." Please don't hunt me down.
"Your father is Gustave Daae? The Swedish violinist?"
The voice sounds genuinely perturbed, and she frowns. It can't be one of them, then; they know exactly who she is, they wouldn't ask… "What? Yes, yes, he - he died a week ago, but what does that have to do with -"
"Christine, listen to me. As soon as I hang up, leave the phone booth and follow Washington Ave south until you reach the museum, and then head from there to Grand Army Plaza. You know your way there?"
"...I do, but -"
"Excellent. There's a liquor store on the southeast corner, and a record shop right next to it. You're going to cut down the alleyway in between. Sharp right once you reach the end, then take the first left - you'll pass Alpine Delicatessen - and I will meet you before you reach the next intersection. I'm on my way."
"What - " her head is spinning, spinning, and she can't seem to keep up. "I - I know I asked you to, hell I begged you to, but why are you helping me? Who are you?"
A sigh from the other end, crackly over the ancient phone line. "Christine, I knew your father, and I may know a little something about the predicament you're in. You're very fortunate that you accidentally called me, of all people. Now, do you remember the directions, or shall I repeat them?"
She sags against the wall of the phone booth, feeling breathless. "No, I - I remember."
"Good. I'll see you soon. Stick to the shadows." And then, unmistakably final, the sound of a dial tone.
XXXXXX
Her heart hammers at every whisper, every flutter of sound, every shadow as she speedwalks down the alleyway, staying close to the grimy wall, resisting the urge to look over her shoulder every five seconds. Every nerve in her body is screaming danger - a clatter from behind sends icy fear prickling under her skin and she has to fight the urge to cry out, barely biting back a whimper.
The sight of the weakly illuminated street fifty feet in front of her, forty-five, thirty triggers a small surge of relief and she picks up the pace, aiming for the end of the alleyway and the open space that somehow seems marginally safer than the shadows surrounding her now.
She's so sick of shadows.
A soft thump sounds from behind her, making her jump; another has her furtively looking back, time stopping as she sees him - the figure less than one hundred feet behind her, a figure in black, a man following her and she whips her head back around, pure fear urging her shaking legs forward until she's breaking into a run, sprinting for the street, heart sinking when she discovers that it's a small, narrow street, completely devoid of life - sharp right, first left - and she's swerving right, darting across the one-way street, making for the first street branching off on her left - a street that as far as she can see is dark, unilluminated, terrifying and she wants to scream at the futility of it all as hopelessness roils in her gut.
Behind her, the repetitive sound of footsteps - heavy breathing - he's running too -
No!
Madly she sprints for the darkened street - first left, first left, first left - and down it, stumbling over her own two feet, clipping her shoulder on the sharp edge of a dumpster she doesn't see until it's too late, ignoring it, running on and on and on.
No!
Her breathing is ragged, filling her ears; is it loud enough for him to hear as well?
No!
A white-hot panic laces through her head; she knows he's gaining on her, she knows she's losing, and with another jolt of adrenaline she spurs herself on faster, faster, can't stop now, can't die -
There is a hand in her hair and a sudden wrenching pull and she is stumbling, falling, smashing her cheek into the gritty asphalt as she tries to turn, to face her attacker. She probably screams, because there's an explosion of pain as her head jerks to the side - he's backhanded her, and she is struggling with everything she's got - but it's not enough. The man pins her wrists to her side, his weight crushing atop her legs and suddenly he's leaning close, an unfamiliar, clean-shaven face filling her field of vision -
"Finally got you, bitch, it's taken long enough," he says, and out of the corner of her eye she sees a flash, a metallic sliver - a needle -
- and she stiffens, bracing herself for a pain that doesn't come because then there's a whoosh of air and the guy is gone.
XXXXXX
It dawns upon her gradually, the freedom to move, the freedom to run; as soon as it does she clambers to her feet, peering through the darkness, barely making out a patch of shadows by the wall. The sound of muffled groans floats to her ears, a shuffle; she starts backing away. There's a loud, distinct snap -
And she stops short at the sight of the figure that emerges from the darkness, stunning her into immobility.
"Christine, I presume?"
And, God and angels above, that voice -
It comes from a man, a man in a black bomber jacket and black trousers; a very tall man, slender, with a crop of tousled black hair and a stark white mask on his face, concealing just the right side, and all she can do is stare.
"Christine?"
It is unmistakably the voice from the payphone, even as distorted as the phone line connection had been; she nods, faintly.
"Are you okay?" the man asks, and she's suddenly struck by the absurd need to laugh. But she doesn't, and her gaze drifts to the lump in the shadows.
"Is - is he -"
"You're safe, Christine. For now, at any rate." And then he's walking toward her and she should be terrified, she should be running away screaming because whatever she'd been expecting, it hadn't been this -
He walks right past her, and she turns around to keep him in sight. He looks back, tilting his head, and she realizes that from this angle she can barely see the strange white mask; in the blur of darkness his face is all angles and patches of shadow, a sharp eyebrow, a chiseled jaw, a swerve of thin lower lip.
"I'd suggest you follow me, or this all will have been a rather useless endeavor."
And so she finds herself following the man, sticking close as he strides down quiet streets and alleyways, navigating the shadows with ease; she follows him like he's some dark, silent Pied Piper as he slips down the stairs into a subway station, completely disregarding the late-night crowd as he weaves through them like a ghost, looking back every so often to make sure she's still there. She follows him until he's wrenching open a clearly unused door in an abandoned utility area, and all she can see are steps heading down, down, down.
"Where - where are we going?" she stammers, halting in her tracks.
The man turns to face her, already five steps down, and quirks an eyebrow. The only visible one, anyway. "You can hold my hand, if you want. It's going to be rather dark and I don't want you to fall."
She stares at him.
Suddenly, she wants to rage and shout and scream; no, she doesn't want to walk in the dark, not anymore, not after tonight, and she absolutely will not hold the hand of someone who - who did whatever he did, back there on that darkened street. But no sooner is she remembering that street than she is recollecting the sheer terror of the past few hours, at her wit's end, losing her mind, fearing for her life; she'd called him from a phone booth, and he came…
And then she's placing her hand in his and following him down the stairs, hesitant, stepping down into the dark, trembling from disbelieving wonder as much as she is from nervous fear.
Who are you?
"Can you at least tell me your name?" she whispers, clutching his hand - impossibly large around her own, and cold besides. The last thing she wants to do right now is to fall behind and lose him and be stuck down here alone in the dark, on a random stairway below the streets of Brooklyn.
You saved me… who are you?
It's quiet for so long that she thinks he's ignored her, nothing but the sound of their footsteps and the distant rumble of the subway echoing around them.
And then, so soft she almost misses it, a name: "Erik."
XXXXXX
Through endless tunnels of sewer, up a ladder, down a claustrophobic, dingy hall; walking through an utility door into a garage, then another, then another, then an electronic keypad and a garage that is decidedly cleaner than the last, empty save for what looks like a black Bugatti Veyron; another electronic keypad and an elevator, smooth and silent, with opaque black walls; emerging from the elevator into a carpeted hallway with golden-warm lights, blinking at the luxury of it, and finally following the masked man - Erik - as he keys in the code to unlock the door to an unbelievably nice apartment, magnificent, the perfect balance of rich opulence and modern modesty, completely ludicrous after everything that's happened tonight, everything she's done and felt and seen.
It's all too much and she can only stand there, dumbfounded, as Erik strides into another room, emerging seconds later with a rather large leather duffle bag in one hand and a wad of white in the other. He approaches her, and she doesn't dare move, squeezing her eyes shut.
What now?...
There's suddenly a stinging pressure on her cheek - and her eyes fly open to find Erik dabbing at it with a wet cloth. His movements are clinical but there's a strange intensity in his eyes, and she shuts her own again as he finishes his ministrations.
"Do you need anything from your home? Anything crucial? Medications, that sort of thing? Anything of your father's?"
"No, I don't think so," she breathes. But then her thoughts are whirling, leading her down a different path - one she's avoided like hell all of tonight, and then she's squeezing her eyes shut tighter against the onslaught of emotions - the deluge of gripping, harrowing grief.
"No, there - well, there was Father's violin, but it's - it's -"
Large, firm hands are suddenly gripping her shoulders, and a voice is speaking gently into her ear. "Breathe."
She does, and belatedly looks up at him, startling. He's so close, and oh, those eyes - stunningly mismatched eyes, now that she can see them properly, the left one a quicksilver blue, the right one an orb of gold in the white plane of his mask. In this moment, they're nothing less than comforting - understanding, infusing her with calm and clarity and the courage to continue on.
"I found his violin smashed to pieces on my bed right after the funeral," she whispers, reliving the memory as she speaks. "That was the first sign. That was four days ago. And the day after, I got the sense I was being followed, and I came home to - to find my cat dead. Strangled." She closes her eyes. "And then they were calling me, threatening my life if I didn't give them what they wanted, and then yesterday morning everything was gone. My bank account, my credit cards, landline, cell phone plan, student ID, everything. Shut down without warning. I was fired from my part-time job, and - and when I went to the police, they ignored me. They acted like nothing was wrong."
His hands are still resting on her shoulders, now rubbing circles into her skin. "And so you ran?"
"I didn't know what else to do," she murmurs, beginning to tremble. "I couldn't pay for the subway, so I starting walking home all the way from the station, and then there was someone following me - I think I panicked, I was trying to call my friend Raoul -"
"And you got me." Erik releases her shoulders and she sways, for a moment, at the loss of contact. He's retreating into the same room as before now - a bedroom? - and he returns with a blanket that he promptly drapes over her shoulders, warm and heavy and grounding.
"I know this may be the last thing you want to hear right now," he says as he walks into a separate room on the other side of the apartment, leaving her field of vision; she hears rushing water and the clatter of china. "But you are an unbelievably lucky girl to have called a random number and gotten me."
He leaves it at that, and she stares at the doorway he'd disappeared into, numb.
He'd said as much on the phone. I knew your father.
Wracking her brain fails to conjure up for her any memory of a masked man or an Erik, not so much as a mention on her father's part; she briefly wonders if she's gone crazy, if she's already been knocked out and is tied up somewhere, or if the past four days since the funeral have all been a horrible dream.
Or even further back than that; what if her father is still alive…?
Erik returns with a mug of something steaming. "Drink this," he commands, and she wraps her fingers around the hot ceramic, obliging him.
The first sip is bitter. She almost gags, but Erik is staring at her and she has no choice but to down the whole thing, wincing at the hot liquid sliding down her throat; moments later she is feeling pleasantly warm and a maybe even a tiny little bit better, and Erik takes the empty mug from her, nodding approvingly.
"I probably owe you an explanation."
"Yes, please."
He sits casually atop the back of the blue silk damask upholstered sofa, tapping a finger contemplatively against his mask. It doesn't make a sound. "Where to start? I suppose a little brutal honesty will suffice for now. I worked with Gustave Daae for a period of time, years ago; you couldn't have been born then, though I suppose you must have come along just a few years later. How old are you, Christine?"
The warmth, rich and tingling, is starting to dull her senses. "Twenty," she murmurs.
Erik nods. "Two years after Gus and I parted ways. Not by choice, you understand, but by reassignment. I liked him well enough. Fantastic musician, which made our stint together infinitely more bearable. I'm sorry to hear that he passed."
"Stint?"
"Your father was never just a violinist, Christine. He was so much more than that."
Pieces are sluggishly fitting into place, and she can only look on in dumb, disconnected horror. "You - what you did, back there, that man -"
A little bit of the light seems to go out in Erik's eyes. "Yes. That should tell you everything you need to know, for now. If you'll excuse me -"
It's all too, too much as the man whirls off the sofa and away from her, snatching up the leather duffle; her mind is shutting down.
"I don't understand," she breathes as Erik moves around the room, working briskly, stuffing various items into the duffle - clothing, papers, a red-leather notebook, and is that a noose? "What are you doing? What am I going to do? I don't have what they want, I don't know what they want, but they won't listen to me. I don't know what to do."
Erik tosses something into the now-full duffle and closes it, sweeping a cursory gaze over the apartment before turning on his heel, making for the still-open door.
"Erik, did you hear me?" And she's on the verge of breaking down now, tears welling in her eyes - she lowers her head, no, she won't cry, she cannot be crying right now - and she's still breathing hard, still fighting for control when Erik's hand wraps around one of hers and pulls her gently over the threshold of the door. He releases her hand, and she hears the door click shut behind her, followed by the electronic beeps and near-silent whirring that had let them inside in the first place.
Black leather dress shoes enter her field of vision and his presence is there, it's everywhere; and she is suddenly exhausted, worn out from the high-pitched stress of the past few hours, of the past few days, and a bone-deep weariness is seeping into every part of her body. She wants nothing more than to let go, than to fall forward - to fall into his presence and sink into the comfort of the arms that she is now somehow certain will catch her.
"Christine, do you trust me?"
Staring at his shoes, really nice shoes that she vaguely thinks could have cost a fortune, she nods.
A long, cool finger is brushing under her chin; she obeys its prompting pressure and slowly lifts her face, meeting his eyes.
"I need a verbal answer, Christine," he says, gently.
She stares at him, spellbound. "I trust you, Erik."
And she does.
He searches her face for a moment more and then nods, satisfied, seemingly finding what he was looking for. Slinging the duffle over one shoulder in a move that is somehow all grace, all strength, utter competence, he straightens to his full height, standing tall, looming, a dark shadow in the golden light of the hallway.
He was a shot in the dark, a stranger on the other end of the phone line, summoned by her desperate, pleading prayer; he is her fortuitous savior, her dark angel, and for the first time in days Christine feels peace.
He extends a hand, and she grips it immediately, holding onto it like a lifeline.
"I'm glad you trust me," he says as he turns to lead her down the hall, toward the waiting elevator. "Because we're leaving the country."